Am I able to transfer an old HDD to a new rig without reformatting?

[Metaphysx]

Basically I have an entirely new computer, minus the HDD/CDwriter/network card (which is from my older PC), and I want to put it into my new Rig without having to depend on my Win7 CD at all.

This is my HDD:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136533

It currently has files I want to preserve and a Windows 7 Ultimate OS. My concern is, will have I have to format my old HDD to install it into the new PC?

I don't have my Win7 CD and have no clue where it is, so if I am able to straight up install my HDD directly into my PC with no need to reinstall my OS with a wipe drive, that would be immensely preferred.

 

[ahnilated]

I highly doubt windows will boot up on the old configuration in the new setup. You will most likely have to reinstall.

 

[Metaphysx]

I highly doubt windows will boot up on the old configuration in the new setup. You will most likely have to reinstall.

Damn I was afraid of that... are there no safe alternatives?

 

[USAFRet]

Highly doubtful the OS would actually boot.

Do you have the license key? If so, you can reinstall the OS. And reinstall everything else...

 

[USAFRet]

I highly doubt windows will boot up on the old configuration in the new setup. You will most likely have to reinstall.

Damn I was afraid of that... are there no safe alternatives?

Nope.

 

[Silver Wolf]

I just had to go through this issue. I have a compaq presario sr5113wm that I replaced the motherboard on with a MSI Intel B75 chipset running a Pentium G2010 cpu (the original oem board was an AMD cpu Ivy motherboard from Asus). The board fits great (it is even smaller than the original which I was worried it would be too big) however I did have to reinstall windows 7 (originally it came with Vista Basic, so I had no problem going with win 7 before - so no big deals with oem software installs) and now just upgrading the windows install and reinstalling the other softwares - but using a custom install allowed all the data to be left in-tact.

Hope this helps answer the next person's question concerning this issue.

 

[Silver Wolf]

I am glad my answer helped you. I am sorry that it was not better news...